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Psalm 22:25-31
Easter 5B
No, it’s not your imagination: the Year B Revised Common Lectionary has put Psalm 22 in front of us now three times in calendar year 2024. Almost this exact same lection was the reading for the Second Sunday in Lent and the entire Psalm was assigned for Good Friday. Now here it is again as…
Psalm 23
Easter 4B
Across the years I have written sermon commentaries on Psalm 23 so often that I am fairly certain I have little new or creative to say that has not been conveyed in one way, shape, or form before! It also does not help that this may be the single most familiar psalm of them all. …
Psalm 4
Easter 3B
Psalm 4 isn’t necessarily the cheeriest Hebrew poem to consider during the otherwise joyful season of Eastertide. Though it ends on an up-beat note, it is also a plea, a lament, a rebuke, and a challenge. But maybe we need to encounter such realities in the midst of this Eastertide season just as much as…
Psalm 133
Easter 2B
Come on and admit it: I am not the only one tempted to insert one more adverb into the opening verse of Psalm 133: “How good and pleasant and rare it is when God’s people live together in unity.” We are painfully aware of why the temptation to insert “rare” exists today. Too many congregations…
Isaiah 25:6-9
Easter Day B
I wonder if there are many preachers who will choose to take the Old Testament Lection as their primary text on Easter Sunday morning? It seems to me that the greater gift and opportunity presented by this text is the way that it sings harmony on the song of resurrection. So I will offer my…
Psalm 114
Easter Day B
The Lectionary assigned parts of Psalm 118 for both Palm/Passion Sunday and Easter and since the March 24 sermon commentary here on the CEP website was on Psalm 118, I will direct you to look that up in our Sermon Commentary Library. But for this commentary we will take the psalm for Year B Easter…
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29
Palm Sunday B
By the end of Psalm 118 it is easy to see why the Lectionary would connect these words with Palm Sunday. The imagery of a festal throng of people going up to the Temple waving tree branches exuberantly in the air makes this fit the traditional ways we picture the events of Jesus’s entrance into…
Isaiah 50:4-9
Palm Sunday B
A Turn Toward the Passion Interestingly, the Lectionary provides two sets of readings for this last Sunday in Lent: (1) a Psalm and Gospel that celebrate the procession with the Palms and (2) a full set of four readings that look ahead to all that stands between the false and frivolous praise of Palm Sunday…
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Lent 5B
Comments, Observations and Questions: Hearing “New Covenant” with the Ears of Ancient Israel The Israelites are in exile. The consequences of their disobedience and failure to keep their side of the bargain haunt them everyday — in the foreign language, customs, foods and, most grievously, religions of Babylon. So Jeremiah, who is often called the…
Psalm 51:1-12
Lent 5B
For the fifth Sunday in Lent, the Year B Lectionary serves up a quintessential Lenten-type psalm in the well-known words of Psalm 51. In preaching classes I always say to my students to not make too big of a deal over any superscriptions that accompany some psalms. In this case it is the superscription that…
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